Book Review: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Time for a book review! I wrote this yesterday and then totally forgot to post it. :D

Pale Fire was recommended to me because of Nameless. I chose a waxwing as the "magic bird" in the story because it was native to Illinois and has a lovely, faciful name, but a couple of people asked me if I took it from Pale Fire, which I'd never read.

I was the shadow of the Waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
-- lines 1-4

Pale Fire is a metanovel of sorts -- the axis of the story is the poem, also titled Pale Fire, that the fictional John Shade wrote in the month before his death. The poem is reproduced in full, but the body of the novel is the preface and annotation by "Charles Kinbote", who obviously tricked Shade's widow into signing over to him the sole right to edit and publish the poem.

( That's where it gets weird... )

Final Verdict: I kind of wish I'd just read the poem. I like the poem! I'd like to have a bound copy of the poem without the annotation, really.

And I thought for Poetry Month today I would share one of John Shade's poems:

Mountain View

Between the mountain and the eye
The spirit of the distance draws
A veil of blue amorous gauze,
The very texture of the sky.
A breeze reaches the pines, and I
Join in the general applause.

But we all know it cannot last,
The mountain is too weak to wait --
Even if reproduced and glassed
In me as in a paperweight.

General Support Log: Week 2

General Support Log
v. 1, week 2

Whatever else you say about John Hart, it's almost admirable how he entirely lacks a sense of shame.

Monitoring:
Captain Jack Harkness (ask_captainjack)
Senior Agent PC Gwen Cooper and Executive Husband Rhys Williams (gwen_e_cooper, therant_willask)
Junior Senior Agent Ianto Jones (ask_aboutcoffee)
Senior Junior Agent Doctor Martha Jones (ask_arealdoctor)
Senior Temporary Agent Captain John Hart (oh_doask)
Time Agency liaison "T" (timeagency)
Torchwood Auxiliary PC Andy Davidson (dontask_pcandy)
Torchwood Temporary Tenant The Doctor (askfor_bananas)
Pet Myfanwy (ask_myfanwy)

( The Week, In Review )

More Uranus jokes were made.

(no subject)

I came home today and slept for an hour and woke up to R buzzing my door and -- I swear to god, he was playing Take me out to the ball game on my door buzzer, WHICH IS VERY LOUD.

But he also brought me Byron's for dinner, to celebrate the winning of the Cubs game he was at. And because I was barely lucid, we watched Wife Swap.

WE DIDN'T MEAN TO, IT WAS JUST ON. And it sucked us in! I know this show is awful, I know it's the worst kind of genderfail and they choose utter caricatures of human beings, but oh god it was THERE. And I was charmed by militantly off-the-grid hippie wife, even if she kept repeating "We believe the American Dream is the American Nightmare" until I began to suspect the whole family was one small book on explosives away from moving to a compound and buying into the Jewish Banking Conspiracy concept.

I really wanted upper-middle-class husband and militantly off-the-grid hippie wife to fall in love and move to a nice energy-efficient home where they could have recycling and electricity. Plus, militantly off-the-grid hippie family's kids were super cool and one of them obviously yearned for electricity.

Then R took off and I fell asleep on the sofa to SuperNanny. ARGH.

Now I have to stay lucid until my PeaPod delivery shows up. Then sleep, sweet sleep, because I have to do dishes, laundry, clean my desk, and try to get the Nameless cover made. I liked the cover I designed a few weeks ago, but looking at it now it's pretty hideous. I like the photo, I just have to pick a new font and perhaps muck about with placement and write the back-cover blurb. Back-cover blurbs normally don't give me trouble, but this one is driving me insane.